Thursday, May 5, 2011

Cauliflower Rice + Spicy Creamy

OK, so I don't really feel much inspiration for the writing part of this, but I am cooking and taking pictures of what I eat. I've found this whole thing valuable since it keeps me cooking regularly (rather than eating out for dinner or buying my lunch each day) and I practice cooking - hopefully getting better in the process. It also means I should cook something at least slightly different each time. So here is what I made yesterday and today, light on the how-to but hopefully interesting.

Cauliflower RiceI had a hankering for some cauliflower and (not sure why) rice with yogurt in it. I fried up the cauliflower in a bit of ghee to get things started:

I cooked the cauliflower a bit longer by adding a mixture of yogurt, dried and shredded coconut, hot pepper, garlic, turmeric, cilantro and salt that I had thrown in the blender to get it smooth. Once the yogurt mixture had reduced, I removed it and set aside.

Next I started the rice by adding some spices (cumin + mustard seed and curry leaves) to ghee and then frying the rice a bit in this spice-ghee mix. Instead of water for cooking the rice, I used the remaining whey from my leftover paneer making the other day. Once this came to a boil, I reduced the heat, tossed in the cauliflower, and cooked on low until the rice was done:

Spicy CreamyThat was yesterday. I wanted a little sauce to accompany the rice and I wanted something very spicy. I decided to do a potato and spinach coconut milk curry. I started off sautéing some ginger, onions, garlic along with potato cubes. When the potato was about halfway there I tossed in a bit of paprika, cumin, and a whole bunch of hot pepper:

I quickly joined the hot pepper with 1 tomato, chopped and cooked about 2 minutes more. A good bunch of spinach was added to the mix here, and cooked with the cover on the pot for about 2 minutes. Finally I added 1 can of coconut milk and brought the whole thing to a simmer. I topped it off with a bit of garam masala. In the end it was only a little spicy since the coconut presumably neutralizes the heat a bit here. Still quite good!